World Champ D Gukesh and Freestyle Chess Conundrum

Reigning world champion D Gukesh just lived through an anomaly of a week—a rare, winless run at a tournament.

- Susan Ninan

BENGALURU: Fischer Random, or Freestyle Chess, as packaged in its latest glitzy avatar, isn't a format the Indian teen prepared for and he finished eighth in a field of 10 participants in Weissenhaus, Germany. He is scheduled to play the Paris leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour in April.

The conundrum Gukesh and his team are grappling with, though, is how much time the 18-year-old should devote to the Fischer Random format and whether it will adversely affect his classical chess.

Fischer Random, where starting positions of the back rank pieces are randomized to minimize opening theory, has seen a revival of sorts with world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen turning to it, and German entrepreneur Jan Buettner backing the enterprise with a full-blown, multi-continent tour.

"It's an entirely different game," Gukesh's trainer Grzegorz Gajewski told HT, "So many concepts that work in regular chess do not apply in Fischer Random and that can be very confusing. The first move that comes to your mind is quite often a mistake in Fischer Random and it's going to take some time before we can all adjust."